Monday Scramble: Open postcards

Welcome to the Monday Scramble, the Champion Column of the Year… or more likely Millisecond.

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A few thoughts from the 138th Open Championship (before we get to the postcards):

• Has there ever before been a completely-bald major champion?

• Tom Watson has always said that one of the things he hopes comes out of his life is that “my peers will say, you know, that Watson, he was a hell of a golfer.” Hell of an understatement, Old Tom.

• Can we still call him Mr. 59?

• We’re just as happy for Stewart Cink as we are heartbroken for Watson. Everyone British, American and everything else wanted Watson to win this week more than they cared to see peace on Earth; That doesn’t mean Cink didn’t play his Tweetin’ butt off. Just because the television networks showed 240 more of Watson’s swings doesn’t mean Claret Stew wasn’t actually out there fighting tooth and nail against Turnberry at the same time. This is an obvious point to make, but necessary to keep in mind over the next few days, as golf media and fans continue 2009’s what-could-have-been bellyaching. Cink beat one heck of a 59-year-old, but also everyone else.

• Tiger Woods needs to smile more, boomerang 4-irons less.

• More than a couple media members said this week that Watson winning the British Open would have hurt golf’s credibility. Eh. Know what really hurts golf’s credibility? Them talking about it.

• No offense to Pebble Beach, but we’d rather play Turnberry.

• Believe it or not, Twitter somehow predicted all this. Long before Cink popped up on television screens holding the Claret Jug, he had over a half-million followers on Twitter. (When Golfweek first wrote about all this Twittering back in April at the Masters, Cink only had 2,241 followers.) That is way more than people like Anderson Cooper, Alyssa Milano and Michelle Wie, not to mention every other Tweetin’ golfer.

Right about the time Cink was lifting the Claret Jug in the air, he had 559,894 followers. A half hour later, 635 more people had joined the club. At midnight, Cink’s total reached 565,304, a 5,410-follower increase. (As of 9 o’clock Monday morning, it was up another 2,453 and counting.)

At 7:13 Sunday night, Cink posted his first Tweet as a major champion, the Claret Tweet (“Not sure what to say yet but this picture should do the trick…”), and a picture of him kissing the Claret Jug. About 5:30 this morning, he posted “Now on board flight back to the States, with one more carry-on than I had on the way over” along with picture of the trophy case in the overhead compartment of his airplane.

Classic stuff.

Which leads us to the Be Careful What You Tweet Dept.: About a day and a few Tweets earlier, Cink for some reason wrote “This vending machine at T’berry locker room can meet ANY need that arises. 2nd to last one is condoms” and posted a picture of the machine that also dispenses things such as toothpaste and ibuprofen.

Oh, the things you can get away with as a Travelers Championship champion.

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WISH YOU WERE HERE: Taking a page out of the USGA’s book, the R&A decided to offer for purchase a dozen limited edition postcards Sunday inside the British Open merchandise tent. Fortunately, we here at the Scramble were again lucky enough to get our hands on them to share with you…